Digital watermarking is a process for modifying physical or electronic media to embed a machine-readable code into the media. The media may be modified such that the embedded code is imperceptible or nearly imperceptible to the user, yet may be detected through an automated detection process. Most commonly, digital watermarking is applied to media signals such as images, audio signals, and video signals. However, it may also be applied to other types of media objects, including documents (e.g., through line, word or character shifting), software, multi-dimensional graphics models, and surface textures of objects.
Digital watermarking systems typically have two primary components: an encoder that embeds the watermark in a host media signal, and a decoder that detects and reads the embedded watermark from a signal suspected of containing a watermark (a suspect signal). The encoder embeds a watermark by altering the host media signal. The reading component analyzes a suspect signal to detect whether a watermark is present. In applications where the watermark encodes information, the reader extracts this information from the detected watermark.
A great number of particular watermarking techniques are known. The reader is presumed to be familiar with the literature in this field. Particular techniques for embedding and detecting imperceptible watermarks in media signals are detailed in the present assignee's copending application Ser. No. 09/503,881 (Now U.S. Pat. No. 6,614,914). Other watermarking techniques are known from published patents to NEC (inventor Cox et al), IBM (inventors Morimoto and Braudaway et al), Dice (inventor Cooperman), Philips (inventors Kalker, Linnartz, Talstra, etc. Audio watermarking techniques are known from published patents to Aris (inventor Winograd, Metois, Wolosewicz, etc.), Solana (inventor Lee, Warren, etc.), Dice, AudioTrack, Philips, etc.
The invention provides a method of connecting multimedia content to a network resource. This method operates in a computer network environment. Operating in a network connected device, the method extracts an identifier from a media signal, such as from a digital watermark, perceptual hash, or other machine extracted signal identifier. It then sends the identifier to a network along with context information indicating device type information. From the network, the method receives related data associated with the media signal via the identifier. The related data is adapted to the network connected device based on the device type information. This device type information may include a display type, so that the related date may be formatted for rendering on the display type of the device. This device type information may also include a connection speed so that the related data may be optimized for the connection speed of the device.
Further features of the invention will become apparent with reference to the following detailed description and accompanying drawings.